Okay, we all know that there are cat people and there are dog people and when it comes to their favourite four legged friend never the twain shall meet. But there are those who love both – the cog or the dat people depending on which kind of furry friend was first in their household.

Much as I love dogs, I have always had cats. Even my very first feline friend gave birth to her kits in my bed when I was only three years old.

I arrived in Tenerife in 2000 from Thailand already kitted out (boom boom) with two furry friends that I brought with me. The venerable Boodle (originally Kitten Caboodle) who lived to a ripe old 22 years and Chokdi, whose name meant Lucky in Thai, but who was one of the unluckiest creatures I have ever come across.

Chokdi settling in

Chokdi and her littermates had been thrown from a three storey window on to the roof of the outside cludgie  of my Bangkok local, ‘Cheap Charlie’s’. Chokdi was perhaps the least appealing because no one had wanted her and while all the others had been spirited away by CC regulars, Chokdi was left in a cardboard box behind the bar. I took the little scrap home.

In the first week it turned out that she had in-turned eyelashes (ouch!) and a fracture in a back leg – not that it seemed to slow her down any. She got stuck behind the oven and stranded mewling at the top of the curtains on a regular basis. At first very scared and nervous, over time she became  a loud and bossy family member with a short, bright tortoiseshell coat and long legs.

Chokdi getting better (believe it or not).

When we went on holiday, the cats went into the care of a local vet. Apart from being mightily pee’d off with us for leaving her there, Boods was fine, Fergus just as fat and contented but poor Chokdi had been struck by a dreadful flesh-eating type disease.  Her beautiful soft fur was peeling off in long, raw tatters, her ears had begun to disintegrate and she was covered in gentian violet. Had we been much longer the vet would have put Chokdi down.

At home with us she recovered slowly although it took a long time  and her ears never looked right again.

Skye and Chokdi just chilling.

The two cats settled into Tenerife very quickly and neither were phased by the addition of a puppy boxer a couple of months later. Everything was great for a year or so until the night Chokdi picked up poison outside. She went into convulsion and died in pain shortly after. My poor soi baby had been through a lot in her short life but she had known love, a full belly and a warm bed which is more than many get in this life so maybe she wasn’t so unlucky after all.

Chokdi died about nine years ago so you might wonder where this trip down memory lane came from.  Well, except for the most recent addition to our family, Mia, who was given to me by a friend, every cat I have ever owned has been from a shelter or was a street stray.  Every one of them has been a wonderful family member and dearly loved friend and none have had any health problems whatsoever except for Chokdi. I just would never consider paying money for a purebred cat when there are all these fantastic waifs and strays out there just wanting someone to take them in.

The good people at K9 asked me to remind TT readers that they have a cattery which is  bursting wth great felines just  waiting for you to take them home. Please don’t miss the next post which will be all about the K9 cats….just remember not to call your new feline friend Lucky!

The big parade in Santa Cruz which is scheduled for Tuesday 16th February is the Carnaval event, the one that all the tourists are here in Tenerife to see; the one ’second only to Rio’. But it is far from the only Carnaval event.

Every town in Tenerife has its own Carnaval with the one in Los Cristianos which runs from 5th to 14th of March and has a Viva Mexico theme this year being the last.

Even though the Arona Carnaval is not until next month, schools are out next week and so those schools which wish to do so will be having their Kids’ Parade tomorrow.

For whatever reasons my kids’ school was a bit of a wet blanket last year with none of the outings and fun stuff the kids had got to do in the previous years. There was no Carnaval Parade, no Canarian Day celebration nor big organised march through the streets to meet the Three Kings and have a picnic in the street.

All their excursions were curtailed too. No visit to the bomberos or to the airport or day spent at the Quimpi farm or environmentally-minded expedition up the side of the Red Mountain.

Although you might think the overall recession was behind the moratorium on fun outings I have a suspicion it was more to do with the teachers lobbying for better pay and jibing at the extra duties required of them in organising and sheperding these missions when they are not paid enough for their daily grind as it is.

Anyway this year somebody put the Ooooh! back in school and we are having a Carnaval Parade. Yaaay! The kids are all aquiver and very much looking forward to their special day tomorrow.

The following information should therefore be of interest to you whether you like kids and want to watch them all march past in their Carnaval disguises or whether you loathe the little monsters and want to stay the hell out of Dodge.

If you are in the Las Galletas neighbourhood tomorrow, the kids will emerge blinking into the sunlight at approximately 12.30. Some kids will be blinking more than others, especially my son who for some mysterious reason is being dressed by his teacher as a traffic light.

My daughter and her classmates will be dressed as natives of La Palma complete with white frocks (at least the girls will be in frocks) and big floppy dress hat.  This year the school chose the outfits and ordered them from El Kilo. Saved a lot of messing about of course but in typical Tenerife fashion we only just got the blouse and skirt home now (2.p.m. on Thursday the day before the big event) to fix or fiddle with if it is too big or small.

As is traditional, all the parents will be there, stepping on each others toes and jostling for position to get the best shots of their babies. It is all in good fun but if you should be there and happen to get a belt in the ribs, well, I apologise in advacne but you really should know better than to get between a mum and her dookied-up darlings.

Earlier on today, I posted about a child kidnap that was supposed to have occurred in Tenerife a day or so ago. At the time I felt sick to my stomach that a young child was in grave danger and I rushed to publish in the hope that, as the message  says below, it would help get the news out and may save the girl from being taken off the island.

Now, thanks to the intervention of Parque and DJandDeid of Tenerife Forum, I know that the information I received was false and I am just sick to the stomach that someone would think that anything of this nature was good subject matter for a hoax.

Why would anyone think this was funny? They even went to the lengths of including the picture of a littl girl, which I have since removed from the post.  I am sure I am not alone in publishing this information and feeling rather stupid right now… but what about the next time?  This stupid joke will make it much harder to get the message out when a child really is taken or goes missing

I was very silly to publish the information without checking its veracity and I apologise wholeheartedly to anyone that was unintentionally mislead and upset.

Original post:

A three year old child was kidnapped from the Taimaimo area one day ago. Elise was apparently taken by two men and a woman who were in a beige or brown SEAT Panda. Please do what you can to get the picture out there.  Please God, let this not be another Maddie or Yerami.

Alerta por el secuestro ayer de esta niña de 3 años  y medio  , Elise, en Tamaimo, Sur de Tenerife. Sus secuestradores, dos hombres y una mujer, viajan en un Seat Panda TF-7633-V (color beige o marrón).

En previsión de que puedan pasar a la península con ella, haz circular este este mensaje con la foto. Gracias…

It has been some time since my last pair of glasses gave up the ghost. I’m not sure if the final straw was when my son accidentally dropped them in the toilet or if it was the dog sooking off the elastoplast that held the glasses’ legs on that finally did it but finally, sadly, I bade my beloved old specs goodbye and resolved to get a new pair in the following few days.

Well, one thing after another and days turned into weeks and weeks into months. I think the world has a certain special charm when seen through a constant fuzzy haze and who cares about littering and graffiti when they are perceived only as pretty colours anyway? No doubt I have offended or confused more than one person as I sailed past them in the street totally oblivious to anything that is going on outside of about a five-foot radius.

I am dreadfully short-sighted but it doesn’t bother me too much. After all, I work at home all day in front of a computer. I only need to see far enough to recognise the keyboard. I suppose I could have gone on quite happily in my soft-focus bubble had I not taken a trip to Carrefour with my nearest and dearest.

After my mother and I had wittered round the shops for a while and hubby had stamped off to the car, my mother decided she needed to visit the loo. There was a bit of confusion between her going in and me coming out, and before you know it I was stranded alone at the door to the carpark. There was a vast sea of cars in front of me and not a nearest or a dearest in sight.

Okay, so there was nothing for it but to plunge off into the murk and trust my sense of direction. Some time later I was rescued from spending the night wandering about the Carrefour carpark by my mother and husband who had been watching me from afar (probably giggling hysterically and taking bets on how long it would take for me to get arrested).

After that experiences glasses were placed firmly back on my To Do list but first they had to fit on my Can Afford list. I was horrified at the quote I got in the first opticians I tried – €500! Jeez I need a pair of specs not the Hubble Telescope!

Next stop was a shop in San Eugenio which had Rebajas signs plastered all over its window. The sales woman talked down to me and stalked my husband round the shop like a hungry lion. The ‘great deal’ at this shop included not charging for an eye test if you end up buying specs from them and a 10% discount on frames. Big deal! Specs from here would cost about €360. My husband was quite happy for us to go ahead and order them but the sales lady had put me off and I would have rather gnawed off my own leg than throw any of my hard-earned cash in her direction.

And then inspiration struck. Hubby looked up a shop he knew from Paris called Afflelou on the internet. Yes! There are two in Santa Cruz. Had I but been able to see it in the first place, Afflelou, is right there in front of the food checkouts in the same Carrefour that kicked off my latest quest for specs and they have a great offer on right now. Buy one set and get a second for €1!

Brilliant. But even better is that the first pair have a standard price. It is about €79 for under 16 (it is some time since I could claim to be under 16 so I didn’t pay to much attention to that offer), €129 for those over €16 and €329 for bi-focals. Imagine that, two pairs of bi-focals for €330!

In my case, I wanted a pair of ordinary glasses and a pair of sunglasses both medicated for my short sight. I had to pay an extra €50 for the sunnies but in the end, I have now got two fab pairs of specs for a total of €180!

So happy as I am at the outcome of my tale, I have two bits of advice to share. The first one is, if you need specs get yourself over to the Afflelou store in Carrefour Santa Cruz before 28 February at which time this fab deal will expire. And the second is to Mr. Alain Afflelou himself. If you are kind enough to offer such a fabulous deal to the optically-challenged and cash-strapped, I suggest you make the posters advertising it at least ten feet tall so people like me can actually see it when we are shopping in the supermarket right in front of your store.

Credit to Dimitris Kritsotakis for the great picture!

Even before the economic crisis Tenerife’s animal  shelters struggled to feed the animals they had in their charge. Now though, in the current economic climate things are even worse and the need for funds to care for the animals that have been abandoned or have strayed is desperate.

The shelters are already full to bursting and yet they are somehow supposed to struggle on with more animals in their care and no funding. The shelters have no more room and no more money. They need help – and they get next to none of that from the government here in Tenerife.

The shelters raise money through charity events, car boot sales and by donations. If you can help in any way, please call K9 on 608 121 081 (Eng) or 670 845 243 (Esp).

Tenerife’s abandoned dogs have their own blog which publishes news on current events, forthcoming fundraisers, etc. If you want more information on the various shelters, vets, trainers, dog kennels, Tenerife Dogs is the place to go.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 killed 230,000 people. The enormity of the loss of life is hard to digest.  It is hard to believe that that many people lost their lives in one cataclysmic event. But is it any easier to imagine the 260,000 men who will die in Western Europe this year from cancer? Or the 277,000 women in Central & Eastern Europe who will succumb to the same disease?

In fact, altogether across Europe over a million people will die this year from cancer. Worldwide, the figure is somewhere near 8 million.

According to the UK CancerStats site more than 1 in 3 people develop some form of cancer in their lifetime. The good news is that the average ten-year cancer survival rate has doubled over the last 30 years and more than seven out of ten children with cancer are now successfully treated compared with fewer than 3 in 10 in the 1960s.

Also according to the CancerStats site, cancer is the number one fear amongst Brits, topping that of heart disease or terrorism. How much scarier then must it be to contract the disease while living in a foreign country, with minimal medical insurance and perhaps not much in the way of family support?

The annual Walk For Life in Tenerife raises money in support of the Spanish cancer charities AECC and Amate. In a sea of pink solidarity, men, women and children walk the 3.5 km from the Mediterranean Palace to the Sal Y Tien plaza. As it says on the Carrera por la Vida website “Once a year, to walk is to support!”

As an expat in Tenerife, you might wonder if these charities are available to you should you fall ill with cancer. For the answer you should read the moving account of one British pensioner in Tenerife Magazine who received such support from AECC that she says they made a terrible time bearable.

Whether you are in town as an expat or a tourist, all you need to do is show up – in a pink t-shirt if you have one – at 10.30 on Sunday 13th December and join the walk.  Sponsorships and donations are passed on to the relevant charities under the guidance of a Notary and with full transparency so you know every penny is going to the aid of somebody who needs it.

You might also announce your participation on the Tenerife Magazine Walk for Life participants page on Facebook.

In cartoons, when a character gets his finger stuck in an electric socket he  turns into a leaping blue skeleton all frazzled and smoking round the edges. It happens quite regularly in Tom and Jerry,  almost always to Tom.

I might not look like a leaping, frazzled, blue skeleton, but that is how I feel. I am Tom.

Something mysterious has happened to the size of my day. Sort of like my favourite Guess jeans,  the day has shrunk and left me unable to squeeze as much in as I used to.  No matter how hard I try, I just can’t pull the day up beyond mid-thigh.

It might look like I have it easy. I just fall out of bed, sleepwalk through breakfast, then bumble to the computer in my jim-jams and there I am, installed at my workplace for the day. No commuting stress to worry about, mad morning clothing  crises, or grumpy boss breathing down my neck…

Well, it might be like that, if it was not for the dogs (up at 6 to walk them) and then the kids to get ready and take to school, (an entertaining adventure which includes the six hundred yard dash to make it to the second school gate after depositing child number one at the first one).  Okay, but surely when I get back from the school run, I just  sit down in front of the computer and that’s me set for the day? Ahhh, no.

The minute the key turns in the door I am attacked by 85 kilos of canine. Tito yodels and slobbers  in delight usually anointing me from head to toe in strings of doggy spit while Skye weaves round my legs  doing the Boxer kidney-bean thing. I push my way through them and survey the battlefield that is my house every morning (and most afternoons and nighttimes too).

I switch the computer on to boot up while  I throw the dishes in the sink and drown them in scalding water and switch the kettle on. Finally, cup of tea in hand, I sit down in front of the computer and KABAM! another bloody power cut! YAAARGH.

Poor Tenerife Tattle is one of the things that is suffering at the moment. Being my own baby, there’s no one to complain if I skip a post now and then except my regular readers (and I have apologised personally to each and every one of them). Unfortunately my real babies are also getting less attention than usual, a fact that came home to me the other day, when my daughter came home with a special project for her tarea. She had to draw her national flag but didn’t know which country she came from.

It is not a clear cut question actually as she has a salad bowl of cultures to choose from in her heritage – although she knows that I am Scottish.  Wanting to do something different, she opted for the Union Jack instead of the St. Andrew’s Cross for obvious reasons. Even so, the conversation we had about it led me to fret that I was not doing enough to pass on any Scottish culture to her.

Seeing as it has been quite some time since I Stripped the Willow and my Scottish dancing skills were never that hot to begin with I decided to take the easy road and start her Scottish culture classes with a spot of home cooking.

God in Govan, what a nightmare! My daughter watched me tip a kilo of sugar and a healthy knob of butter into a pan and asked me if I was quite sure that I had read the  recipe. I told her all was well, and that this recipe for Scottish fudge was said to be failsafe.  (With a name like Scottish Fudge Fer Dunderheids it had to be).

We both watched and waited for the suger to turn to syrup and I regaled her with happy memories of toffee and tablet making in my younger years.  All was warm and fuzzy and I felt like we were having a real girly moment till she yawned and said she’s better go and do her homework. “Fudge!” I muttered to myself darkly, stirring what was becoming a very dark and sticky mess.

At the point where the condensed milk is supposed to glide into the pot, the whole damn thing exploded in a Vesuvial eruption of burning sugar. My husband let out a manly scream and leapt to the fore with a metal whisk. After he beat it into submission (and to the point when all hope of fudge had flown out the window) I took over the pot again. My daughter had returned and sat cross legged watching all the excitement. “Is it supposed to smell like that?” she enquired sweetly, wrinkling her nose.

In the end, my Dunderheid Fudge turned out to be Toothcracking Toffee. In order to make anything at all out of the sticky mess, I had rolled lumps of it into little balls and stuck them out of sight in the fridge. Now there they sit, looking like black bullets and welded so hard to the plate that you have to chip them off with a knife.

I think it is safe to say that so far, my daughter is not very impressed with the riches of the Scottish culinary tradition.

I received a message of sympathy from wee Margaret, a Scottish fudge-maker of consummate skill who urged me to give it another go.  Margaret is right of course, and my daughter and I have a date carved in stone to spend more time messing up the kitchen together. In the end, it doesn’t matter if we ever manage the perfect Scottish fudge. By not giving up we are putting a different Scottish lesson into practise – Robert the Bruce’s exhortation to ‘Try, try and try again’.